Yes. I think the ‘seductive’ aspect to people like Prismatic, and you and I have probably been like him at least in a post or two, is that he is smart, but closed. But the smart makes it seems like just around the next corner he might admit that there is a possibility, given he didn’t think of point X someone just made, that he is wrong about Y. But around each corner you encounter the same thing, the same formulations even, the same fallacies, the same certainty.
I think Phyllo spent some time, and I chimed in, trying to show that objectively perfect is problematic. That things are perfect for someone. That it is inherently subjective, even if it is a universal subjective evaluation. Or, at least, it is not an easy thing to say what objective perfection means. Prismatic didn’t bite or question his own certainty. And that’s dealing with the argument he makes based on all his assumptions of what God must be like and so on. IOW even if we accept a lot of nonsense for the sake of his argument, his argument still has problems.
I have to look at my own reaction to posters like Prismatic, and others such as Iambiguous. Why do they trigger so much in me? And I think it is because they present such certainty as if it should be obvious to others. I don’t really have a problem with certainty. I am, certainly at times, quite certain of things. We more or less have to be to navigate reality. But it is another thing to press this certainty as words on a screen, as if you have accomplished a not refutable certainty here and others should see it. Now Iamb might find it odd to be categorized this way since he likely sees himself challenging certainty, but he makes the same arguments and also draws conclusions about others with great certainty himself. These are not the conclusions of his posts, but the means. When this is pointed out he also can never admit anything. And he presumes that one should be able to demonstrate all sorts of things via words on a screen that one cannot.
This kind of stubbornness and certainty spreading is, I think, part of the problem out there. Part of a larger closed mind. A kind of undermining, shaming smugness, and despite having so many scientists who adhere to this kind of attitude, is precisely unscientific. So, I can react with great vehemence to people who pull this kind of thing. After a while I tend to move to a meta-position in reaction to them, responding more to others around them, than to them directly. As a way of avoiding the ‘just around the next corner of the discussion’ seduction.
These voices create a static that delays a more open community discussion because they share a sense that words on a screen can settle much more than they really can. Both think that if you cannot demonstrate idea X via words on a computer screen, then believing in X is irrational. This belief that Iamb and Pris share is so hopelessly confused about the human situation, but it is an idea shared by corporations and technocrats and power brokers of all kinds (when it suits them to put forward this idea) and is, I think, causing a lot of damage in the world as it marginilizes all sorts of things as irrational and with great certainty.
It’s a bit like the bureaucratic mind when you come with a health problem or whatever that does not easily fit in their categories. These minds look at the papers and rules and your problem or experiences and reality does not exist. I do understand a bureaucrat who says: I am sorry, I can only do so much, you may be quite right, but I have my own job and needs to think of. But that openness is too much for them. Most will act as if you are hallucinating. It’s all you. As if their papers couldn’t possibly be limited or problematic.